Robert

Robert, known to Philip as Little Robert, is a man without legs who begs outside Herman Roth’s downtown office. Philip first sees him through a child’s fearful fixation on bodily difference, but Robert’s repeated, friendly exchanges with Herman later become Philip’s single defining memory of his father. In the novel, Robert’s presence connects the anticipation of Alvin Roth’s injury with the grief that follows Herman’s death.

Identity and Daily Life

Robert moves on a small plywood platform fitted with roller skates, using his hands—protected by heavy work gloves worn throughout the year—to get around. He begs outside the building where Herman works. During baseball season, as office workers leave at the end of the day, Robert calls out the afternoon’s final scores in a deep, declamatory voice; the men drop coins into his battered laundry pail. His routine gives him a recognizable place in the daily life around the office, even as Philip’s account dwells on how difficult the child finds it to look at him.

Philip remembers that his fear kept him from observing Robert’s clothing for long. He is also struck by the ordinary details of Robert’s identity: the man has a common first name, six letters long, like Philip’s. When Philip asks whether Robert has a last name, Herman replies that he does, but then admits he does not know what it is. The gap between the familiar name and the unknown surname marks how little Philip understands of Robert’s life beyond the brief encounters he witnesses.

Encounters with Herman and Philip

Herman and Robert greet one another with a friendly nod when Herman passes into the office with Philip. Their exchange is casual and reciprocal: Herman asks, "How you doin', Little Robert?" and Robert replies, "How you, Herman?" The ease of the greeting contrasts with Philip’s intense attention to Robert’s body. To his father, Robert is not only the spectacle that frightens the child but also a familiar person addressed by name.

Robert’s image returns when Philip lies awake anticipating Alvin’s arrival at the family home to convalesce. The sight of Alvin’s empty trouser leg at the knee makes the disability Philip had previously encountered at a distance suddenly relevant to his own household. Involuntarily, he pictures Robert on the wheeled platform, his gloved hands carrying him forward. The remembered figure thus becomes part of Philip’s attempt to imagine a bodily reality he fears and does not yet know how to face.

Memory After Herman’s Death

After Herman dies by suicide, Philip says that he has only one memory of his father. It is not a grand or dramatic episode, but the repeated greeting outside the office: Herman addressing Robert, and Robert answering him. Philip sets this memory against Alvin’s last memory of his own father, in which a car door closes on the boy’s finger. The contrast makes Robert’s brief presence central to the way Philip recalls Herman: through an everyday gesture of recognition between two people.

Robert therefore remains a minor figure in the action but a lasting element in Philip’s understanding of his family. The child’s fearful gaze turns him into an image of bodily vulnerability; the father’s greeting restores a social relation that Philip’s fear cannot initially perceive. When Philip later reaches for a memory of Herman, it is this exchange—with its ordinary names and unceremonious kindness—that survives.